Zella Day

A dusky-voiced 22-year-old singer/songwriter from deep in the mountains of Arizona, Zella Day makes electro-charged, guitar-driven indie-pop that’s steeped in a magic of her own invention.

Originally from the tiny mountain town of Pinetop, Zella began exploring her storytelling-driven approach to songwriting as a 12-year-old girl. By age 14, she’d brought her free-spirited romanticism and self-taught guitar skills to the making of a full-length release of entirely original material. Soon after moving to L.A. in her late teens, Zella set to work on KICKER an album closely shaped by her fascination with desert mystique and ’60s California. With KICKERS’s lead single “Hypnotic” hitting #1 on the Alt Nation Alt 18 Countdown, Zella toured North America and internationally playing nearly 150 headline shows and support dates alongside artists such as Fitz and the Tantrums and Miike Snow. She has performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers andCONAN, has stunned audiences at Coachellaand Lollapalooza, and has seen praise from outlets such as The FADER, Consequence of Sound,The New York Times, The Guardian,Vogue, InStyle,ELLE,Vanity Fair,W Magazine,FLAUNT, and PAPER.

Revealing her own power to bend reality into something much more enchanted, KICKER arrived with Zella having already racked up nine #1 Hype Machine singles and drawn raves from the likes of Interview, Vice, Nylon, and Soma, who note that “There is an incandescent quality that Zella Day possesses… it resonates throughout her songs with flawless grace.”

Now at work on her next album, Zella notes that her rigorous touring and sharpening of her songcraft has helped clarify her intentions as a songwriter. “I’ve gotten a better hold on my artistry and realized that I want to offer a safe place within my music: a tangible happiness,” says Zella. “I really believe that art can manifest ideas into reality, and I want to use that to bring good intentions into being—both within myself and in other people.” And though songs like “Man on the Moon” and “Hunnie Pie” capture the nuances of wonder and heartache with equal precision, Zella ultimately aims to infuse her music with joy. “As much as it’s important to me to express my darker and sadder sides, I make sure to bring out that lighthearted side too,” she says. “With all the division that’s happening in the world, everybody needs a little lightheartedness right now.